


Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

by temporal-infidelity (gyabou)



Category: Misfits (TV 2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different Powers, Dreams, M/M, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 20:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19092718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyabou/pseuds/temporal-infidelity
Summary: “Simon would open up his locker every once in awhile and there’d be a mysterious object he’d never seen before sitting there on top of his comic books. A small metal penguin; an unusual puzzle, almost like a Rubiks cube, that Simon couldn’t figure out; a glass prism that cast improbable shapes and colors against the floor when he held it up to the light.”Nathan has a different power.





	Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

**Author's Note:**

> And here I come with a very strange fic that nobody asked for. Enjoy I guess

“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”

\- William Shakespeare, _The Tempest_

“That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.”

\- Neil Gaiman, _The Wake (The Sandman, volume 10)_

 

It was a rainy, muddy afternoon on the day Simon broke his phone. He was trying to get a shot of the river from the roof, the water all disturbed and angry by the storm, and it slipped right out of his hands and fell down to the pavement below.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Nathan said, leaning over to take a look. “Bet you can’t return that for a refund.”

Simon sighed. He’d have to ask his mum to get him a new one, and she’d be angry, want to know what he’d done with the original one, get him the cheapest one possible that would take terrible video and --

And everything that he’d saved but never backed up on this one was probably lost forever.

He mumbled to Nathan about megapixels and lens apertures and optical image stabilization as they made their way downstairs and outside so Simon could collect what was left of what might have been his closest companion, now in pieces all over the soaked ground.

“Sorry, mate,” Nathan said. “Maybe you can find the kind you want on eBay or something.”

  


The next day when he came in for his community service, a little tired from the argument he’d had with his mum and from staying up late, trying and failing to extract everything that had been saved on his broken phone, feeling bereft without the weight of it in his pocket, Nathan handed him something.

“What’s this?” Simon said, even though it was perfectly obvious what it was. It was a phone. A shiny black, gleaming phone, that felt … expensive. “Where did this come from?”

Nathan shrugged. “I found it,” he said.

“Found it?”

“Yeah, you know, in the community center. Figured you could use it.”

“It must belong to someone,” Simon said, turning it on. “Someone must have left it behind.” But when the screen illuminated, it began to go through the set up procedures of a brand new phone, as if Simon were the first one to ever use it.

“Nah,” Nathan said. “I think it’s yours now, mate. Meant to be!”

“You don’t want it?” Simon asked, confused.

“My phone’s fine,” Nathan said. He took out of his jumpsuit pocket and gestured with it. It was a battered old flip-phone.

“Are you sure?” Simon asked, unable to believe that Nathan was serious about this, but he had already turned away, shouting out to Kelly something how it was more humid out than a rapist’s balls, grinning as she made a disgusted face but, nonetheless, laughed.

  


The phone was miraculous. It was fast and the battery lasted forever, the photos and videos it took were crisp and detailed, there were editing effects available that Simon’d never seen on anything besides professional equipment. All day long he floated in a sort of happy dream world, playing around with it whenever he got the chance, and occassionally he’d look up and see Nathan watching him, a strange expression on his face -- something like satisfaction.

He was ready to accept that he was just extremely lucky, a fool who’d stumbled upon some extraordinary good fortune, until he plugged the phone into his computer to upload all of the photos and videos he’d taken that day, and discovered something absolutely impossible.

Along with the shots he’d taken that day on the new phone, the ones he’d lost on the old one were uploaded, too.

At first he thought he was mistaken. Maybe last night he’d been able to actually retrieve the data but just hadn’t realized it. But no, when he turned on the phone and poked around on it a little, he found them all, right there, on this strange new phone where they didn’t belong.

Where the hell had Nathan found this thing?

  


The more he thought about it, the more he started to think of weird things Nathan had “found” in the past. Kelly complained one day about how her trainers were falling apart, and the following day someone had conveniently left some behind in the locker room. Just the right size. Curtis had a pulled muscle and Nathan managed to dig up some mysterious miracle-working ointment from the community center infirmary. Alisha lost her favorite necklace and cried about it for a whole day, and the next morning Nathan’d found it, trapped in between two paving stones outside.

The next day he watched Nathan, laughing and joking and being disgusting just like good old normal Nathan. When he had the chance he cornered Nathan on the roof.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, taking out the phone.

“I told you, man,” Nathan said, “it just got left behind on one of the benches.”

“This phone isn’t possible,” he said. “I can’t find any phone like it on the market. It doesn’t exist.”

Nathan shrugged, seemingly unbothered. “Maybe it’s one of those prototypes. Somebody’s gonna get fired for leaving it behind, probably!” He laughed.

Simon stared at him. “I think I know what’s actually going on,” he said.

“Oh?” Nathan smiled and looked expectant. “Well, enlighten me, then.”

He gestured towards the phone. “You … made this, somehow.”

Nathan blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I think you have a power,” Simon said. “And this has something to do with it.”

His smile faltered a little. “That’s a pretty shit power, then, making mobile phones.”

“It’s not just the phone,” Simon said. “Kelly’s trainers, Alisha’s necklace --” he remembered now, too, how unusual Kelly’s trainers had been, like something out of a comic book almost, and there hadn’t been a brandname on them. And Alisha had kept exclaiming that her necklace looked so much shinier and polished than it had been before she’d lost it. “How do you do it? And why haven’t you told us about it?”

Nathan stared at him silently for a little while, then shrugged. “Well, you know, I always said I wanted a power off the A-list, and this one kind of sucks, so I figured I wouldn’t advertise it.”

“But how?”

“It’s just like …” He walked over to the edge of the roof and put his hands in his jumpsuit pockets. “I have a dream about something, right, and then the next day, sometimes it turns up.”

Simon stared at his back, the too-large, dirty jumpsuit hanging off his skinny shoulder blades. “You … dream things into existence?”

“I guess.”

“But … that’s amazing!” It was much better than turning invisible, in Simon’s opinion.

“I don’t know how to control it, though,” Nathan muttered. “I tried dreaming up useful shit, like money, but it came out all wrong. Looked like toy money. One time I dreamt a pizza, but it tasted like dirty old newspaper or something, it was terrible.” He turned back around and shrugged. “So what’s the point?”

“The point?” Simon shook his head in disbelief. “Nathan, I’m sure you can figure out how to have more control over it, and if you do --” The thought, honestly, was a little terrifying. What might Nathan dream up?

A thought occured to him. “Have you dreamed anything … bad?”

Nathan stared at him, his expression a little off. “Not yet.”

  


Simon didn’t tell the others about Nathan’s power. He figured it wasn’t his place. If Nathan wanted to say something (and why he didn’t was still a mystery to him) then he would.

Nathan seemed wary of him at first, avoided hanging around him, didn’t call him names or even address him much, as though he were trying not to remind Simon of his power and give him an opportunity to blurt it out in front of everyone. But eventually he started to relax.

It was shortly afterwards that the gifts began appearing.

Simon would open up his locker every once in awhile and there’d be a mysterious object he’d never seen before sitting there on top of his comic books. A small metal penguin; an unusual puzzle, almost like a Rubiks cube, that Simon couldn’t figure out; a glass prism that cast improbable shapes and colors against the floor when he held it up to the light.

Nathan never said anything about the items, and Simon wasn’t sure if he even knew about them. His restless brain must just be dreaming them up into Simon’s locker at night. Perhaps it was some subconscious way of saying thank you. Or an attempt to buy his continued silence.

He didn’t know quite what to do with them, so he brought them home and lined them on his bookshelf like magical totems, wondering what Nathan’s dreams might come up with next, and what the inspiration was behind each one. He couldn’t help but be curious about how the whole thing worked. He wanted to talk to Nathan about it more, but he was reluctant to bring it up and scare him off, break the fragile peace they had achieved. Sometimes, though, he’d stare at his phone, wondering if it was even really a phone. If he took it apart, would there be wires and microchips inside like any other device? He didn’t think so. Somehow, he was sure that inside it would be perfectly empty, a miracle powered by nothing but Nathan’s dreams.

The other funny thing about the phone was that he had not yet used it as a phone. He wasn’t rightly sure what his phone number even was; he hadn’t attached it to his parents’ account, hadn’t made any outgoing calls on it. His mother had gotten him a cheap flip phone as he’d expected so he used that for regular phone-things, which he needed to do very rarely anyway.

So when the phone started ringing one night when he was almost asleep, he was a little startled and disturbed. For one thing, it had a very unusual ringtone, something almost like windchimes, but there was no repeating patten to it, almost like actual chimes were ringing somewhere, and he almost thought he could hear the wind, too. He stared at it where it lay, ringing, on his bedside table, before he reached over and picked it up. The screen was illuminated with the name of the person calling, even though Simon had never put anyone in his address book.

It was Nathan.

He answered the phone.

“Hey, Barry,” Nathan’s voice chirped, bright and clear as though he were standing right next to him. “What’s cookin’?”

“How did you call this phone?” Simon asked. “What number did you dial?”

“I was wondering if you could come back to the community center,” Nathan said, completely ignoring him. “There’s something I could use a little help with.” And then he hung up.

Simon stared at the phone for a few minutes. Then he checked his call history so he could try to call Nathan back. It was blank.

  


The community center was only a twenty minute walk from his house, but he didn’t usually walk there in the middle of the night, and he wasn’t usually slightly weirded out and jumping at every strange noise. When he reached the community center, he realized he didn’t know how to get in. Eventually, he walked around to the back, where the riverside was, and found Nathan standing outside, looking out at the water and smoking a cigarette.

“There you are,” Nathan said. He dropped the fag on the ground and scuffed it out with his shoe. “Come on.” He gestured at the community center and began to walk back towards it.

“Wait, stop,” Simon said. “What’s this all about? And what about that phone call, how did you do it?”

Nathan waved his questions away like so many pesky flies. “None of that’s important, Barry.”

“Why am I here, then?”

He frowned, then sighed. “Remember how I said I hadn’t dreamed up anything bad?”

Simon had a bad feeling. “Yes?”

“Well, I kind of lied.”

His bad feeling got a lot worse. “What is it?”

“I don’t really know,” Nathan said, “but it’s been skulking around the center and I can’t fucking sleep in there! A few nights ago I woke up and _it_ was there, standing over me, _breathing_ on me. And when I shone a light on it, it was gone.” He sighed. “The last two nights I’ve slept out on the roof, but I’ve got to do something about it. This can’t go on forever.”

“And by _I_ you mean _me_ ,” Simon muttered. “Why me, anyway?”

“Ah, you’re good at this stuff,” Nathan said off-handedly. “You know, solving mysteries, hiding bodies, burning down houses. Why not add slaying monsters to the list?”

Simon rolled his eyes. “So it’s definitely a monster, then?”

“What else would you call it?” Nathan took hold of the door handle. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

The community center was dark and silent. Nathan found the light switches and flicked them on; one by one they sputtered to life, illuminating the rooms and hallways. It looked like it always did, but somehow not. The oppressive darkness pressing in at the windows gave the place a sinister look, and Simon wondered how Nathan could stand to sleep here night after night. He supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers though.

“Where do you think it is?”

“I thought I heard something in the loos,” Nathan said, “but that was hours ago.”

“Let’s start there, then,” Simon said, feeling very out of his depth, despite what Nathan might think. He did wonder, as they walked through the locker room and into the bathrooms, if Nathan hadn’t just called him simply for company while dealing with this thing, and not for any supposed expertise.

“Wait,” Nathan said, and opened a locker. He took out two cricket bats. “If you see it, give it a good whack with this.”

“Where’d these come from?” Simon asked. “Did you -- you didn’t dream them up, did you?”

Nathan looked at him like he was simple. “Of course not, I found them in the sport supply closet earlier. If I’d dreamed anything up, it would’ve been something more useful. Like an Uzi.”

In the bathroom, Nathan stood very close to him, his right arm only inches from Simon’s left arm. He was so close that Simon could smell him, cigarettes and something acidic -- maybe the shampoo or soap he used. Simon cautiously pushed each stall door open with his cricket bat, but when they reached the last one, it was empty like all the others.

“Hm,” Nathan said. “Slippery bugger.”

“You sure there’s nothing else you can tell me about it?”

“I told you, man, I didn’t get a good look at it.”

“And … you’re sure it’s … you know, real?”

“What, do you think I’m just afraid of the dark and called you over to help me fight the bogeyman?” Nathan looked disgusted.

That hadn’t been what Simon had been thinking at all. He’d been wondering if Nathan had just made the whole thing up to fuck with him. It did seem like something he’d do.

But he didn’t have a chance to say that, because then Nathan opened the door to the locker room, and they both fell silent. It was pitch black.

“Maybe there are motion detectors,” Simon said. “To save on energy.”

“Nah,” Nathan said, his voice a little shaky. “I usually have to turn the lights off manually to go to sleep.”

Simon let out a long sigh. “Are those switches near the doors really the only ones?”

“Yeah.”

He fumbled with his phone and managed to turn on the flashlight. He shone it on Nathan. He was staring off into the darkness, like he was looking for something. “Let’s go,” Simon said.

With the aid of the phone’s light, it wasn’t so bad, but Simon still felt like someone was watching them, just out of reach of the skinny column of light that spread out before them. They were halfway to the locker room door when there was a loud _thud_.

“What the fuck was that?” Nathan hissed, spinning around. He grabbed Simon’s arm, tightly. The press of his hand was hot through Simon’s shirt, like a brand.

Simon waved the phone around, looking for a sign of anything, but saw nothing unusual. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just see the dim outline of Nathan waving his cricket bat in a flailing arc at nothing.

“Ignore it,” Simon said, “let’s go turn on the lights --”

“Yeah!” Nathan said, as though he’d forgotten and only just remembered, “the lights!” He plunged into the darkness, heading for the hallway.

“Nathan, wait!” Simon shouted, running after him, but Nathan was fast. In his haste, he clipped the edge of a locker, dropped the phone, and stumbled back, dazed.

That was when he heard it -- the breathing. It was coming from right behind him; like Nathan had described, he could feel hot panting against his neck. Simon spun around, but in the darkness he could see nothing. “Who’s there?” he shouted, and waved the cricket bat vaguely in front of him, but it encountered nothing. But he could still hear that breathing.

He needed to grab the phone. He looked around but it must have landed flashlight side down because he couldn’t see it anywhere. Stepping backwards, he slid his feet along the ground, hoping to encounter it, and as he did, he noticed that his eyes were beginning to become accustomed to the darkness. He could see outlines of the lockers and benches, just barely.

And he could see the outline of a person.

The person who was breathing.

They were a little taller than him, skinny, and had a head of curly hair. As they shuffled closer, their features became more visible, and Simon realized --

“Nathan?” he said. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“Barry!” Nathan’s voiced echoed. He sounded far away. “I, uh, kind of fucked up. I’m not quite sure where I am.” Unless Nathan had learned how to throw his voice, he was definitely not in the locker room.

Simon blinked and swallowed a few times. “Shit,” he whispered.

The figure in the locker room stood still, breathing evenly, saying nothing. It was definitely Nathan, but it was not. There was something wrong about his face. It was hard to see at first, in the dark, but eventually Simon realized: where his eyes should have been were just shadows, hollow and empty.

Did Nathan dream _this_?

Simon extended the cricket bat and poked at the thing standing in front of him. He encountered some resistance, but it was soft, mushy almost, and the bat seemed to sink into it after a minute. A repulsed shiver passed through him. The Not-Nathan didn’t move, just stared and breathed hoarsely.

“Why’d you turn the lights off?” Simon asked. “What do you want?”

Still, it said nothing.

“Ah ha!” Nathan shouted from the hallway. “I think I’ve found the right wall! I’m almost there!”

The Not-Nathan slowly turned its head towards the sound of Nathan’s voice. And then it began to shuffle, right past Simon, towards the door, which Simon realized he could now see.

Nathan. That’s what it wanted, it wanted Nathan.

“Ah, fuck!” Nathan called out. “Er, I guess I was wrong.”

Simon spun around, looking for his phone. He could see it now, thanks to his increased vision. He picked it up and followed the creature out the door and into the hallway, and shone it at the creature. To his amazement, when the light hit it, it vanished, but when he took it away, Simon could see it again, exactly where it had been.

“Barry!” Nathan yelled, and he saw him running towards him. But then Nathan must have seen the thing standing between them and drew up short. “Oh, shit.”

It shuffled closer. Nathan stood frozen, transfixed. Biting his lip, Simon dashed past the thing to stand next to Nathan. “We should get out of here,” he said. “Come on, Nathan.”

But Nathan just stood, looking at his creepy double. “I think I remember this dream now,” he said.

“Nathan,” he said again. Not sure what to do, he dropped the useless cricket bat and grabbed Nathan’s hand. “Let’s go!”

“Hold on. I’m -- I’m going to try something.” And he actually squeezed Simon’s hand for a minute before letting go and stepping forward.

“What are you doing?” Simon hissed.

“Hey, you freak,” Nathan said to his twin, which just stared back at him. He reached out towards him, and Simon let out a gasp.

“Nathan, I don’t think you should --”

“I know what I’m doing,” Nathan said, then added, “I think.”

He touched the Not-Nathan’s hand, tentatively, then a little more firmly. And his hand disappeared insde its dark, soft shadowy flesh, just like the cricket bat had done.

“Well, that feels fucking weird,” Nathan muttered.

The Not-Nathan opened its mouth, as though it wanted to speak, but it was just a dark, shadowy hole like its eyes.

“Come on, you bastard, get it over with,” Nathan muttered.

The Not-Nathan closed its mouth, and then it began to walk _into_ Nathan. Simon watched in a sort of abstract horror as their bodies overlapped, Nathan shuddering a little. And then, gradually, the dark outline of that thing seemed to vanish, dissipating, until all that was left was regular old Nathan.

“Are you okay?” Simon asked, just as the all the lights in the community center flickered on.

“I think so,” Nathan said, in a sort of strangled voice, then coughed. A puff of blackness, like a cloud, came out of his mouth and drifted away into nothing. “Disgusting.”

“What … what was that?” Simon couldn’t help but stare at Nathan, looking into his eyes, trying to see if anything looked different. “You said you remembered the dream it came from.”

“Vaguely,” Nathan said, glancing away. “It didn’t really make any sense. You know how dreams are.”

  


It was perhaps two weeks later when they received an unexpected visitor. They were working outside, cleaning off graffiti, when a guy passing by stopped in his tracks, staring at them, long enough that they all looked up and stared back. When Nathan saw him, he did a double take, and the guy frowned a little bit and said, “Ah, it is you, Nathan.”

“Paul,” Nathan said, “what’s up?” He grinned, but his grin didn’t reach his eyes.

“Didn’t know you were still doing … this,” Paul said.

“Yup,” Nathan said, popping the _p_ , “I am still doing _this_.”

He wandered over and they had a brief conversation, friendly, Simon supposed, but he kept feeling like something was sort of off. Neither seemed very comfortable around the other.

After they finished community service, Paul joined them at the pub. The bits of conversation Simon overheard keyed him on the reason for at least some of the tension. It seemed that Nathan had asked Paul for a place to crash after getting kicked out his mum’s, and Paul had fobbed him off. When Paul asked him if he’d found somewhere to stay, Nathan shot them all pointed looks and told him it had all worked out in the end.

Simon, who’d had so few friendships before he’d started community service that he could count them on one hand and still have a few free fingers, wondered if it was really normal for friends to let each other go homeless and lie to each other about their living accomodations. Then again, he sort of considered Nathan his friend and hadn’t really tried to do anything to change his situation either, and neither had any of the others. Not that there was much he could do about it.

(But if he could … would he? Would he let Nathan live with him? He imagined it would be hellish, he really couldn’t blame this Paul person for saying no, but when he thought about the big, dark, empty community center and Nathan’s pitiful little mattress up on the balcony, the almost plaintiveness of the odd little gifts that had turned up in his locker … well, he figured any resistance he’d have would fade eventually.)

At some point, Curtis and Alisha excused themselves, probably to go off and not shag each other, and Kelly went to get a drink at the bar and started flirting with the bartender, and Nathan went to the loo, and then it was just Simon and Paul left behind.

Paul gave him a tepid, noncommital smile, and Simon tried to smile back.

Awkward silence.

“Have you and Nathan been friends for a long time?” Simon asked.

Paul gave an uncomfortable grin. “Since Year 8,” he said. “That’s when he moved here, from Ireland.”

“Wow,” Simon said. He thought of Matt, of their long friendship, and how it had ended, with a bang, while Paul’s and Nathan’s currently seemed to be dragging out in slow, painful agony. He didn’t know which was worse.

“Look,” Paul said, suddenly, and he looked around, skittish, to see if Nathan was coming back, “I was wondering -- well, has anything _weird_ happened lately?”

“Weird?” Simon asked, a little bit in disbelief. Everything that had happened lately was weird. He wouldn’t know where to begin. “Do you mean … um, the storm?”

Paul blinked without recognition. “The storm?” he said. “Oh, that storm a few weeks ago? No, I meant -- you know, around _him_.” He gestured towards the bathroom. “Nathan.”

“Like what?”

“You know, like … shit that doesn’t make any sense. Things turning up in places you don’t expect, stuff _happening_ just because --” he leaned forward and whispered, “just because he said something about it.”

A cold feeling passed through Simon. “Give me an example.”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Paul said, shaking his head, “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true. Let’s see, an example -- well, when we were in Year 10, we had this maths teacher who really hated Nathan, always called him an idiot and gave him shit. Not that he didn’t deserve it, really, you know what he’s like. Anyway, we heard a rumor one day that this teacher was terrified of spiders, and Nathan got real interested, and the next day -- the next day when the teacher opened up his desk drawer, tons of spiders came out. Like more than I’ve ever seen in my life. It was like a nightmare, I tell you. And Nathan just grinned and watched the whole thing, and we were all sure he had something to do with it, but he wouldn’t say he did, and nobody could figure out how he’d even have managed it.”

Simon felt like he had something lodged in his throat. “When did you say this happened? Year 10?”

“Yeah, years ago. And there’s been other things. But that’s why I don’t hang around him much anymore, he just kind of creeps me out. So nothing like that’s happened since you’ve known him?”

Simon shook his head, feeling dazed. “No, nothing,” he lied.

Paul grunted. “Oh. Good, I guess.”

And then Kelly came back, and Nathan, and Paul acted like nothing had happened, and shortly after that he left, and Kelly did too, and Nathan was still sitting there, drinking slowly.

“You’re very quiet,” Nathan said. “I mean, quieter than usual.”

“You lied,” Simon said, suddenly.

Nathan froze. “What’s that?”

“About your power,” Simon said. “You -- you didn’t get it from the storm, did you?”

Nathan gazed at him. “What do you mean? Of course I did.”

“Paul said --”

His mouth tightened. “Paul,” he muttered.

“You’ve always had it, haven’t you?” Simon watched him, looking for some form of denial, btut Nathan’s expression remained stony. “Nathan, you have to tell me the truth now. Did you -- did you _dream the storm_?”

And then Nathan bit his lip, his expression wavering, and he looked at Simon with sheepish eyes.

“Oh my god,” Simon whispered, thunderstruck. “Oh my god, _you did_.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Nathan muttered. “I told you I -- I don’t always have control over these dreams. Sometimes they just happen. I don’t know how to stop it.”

Simon was completely speechless. All this time he’d been telling himself that he’d gotten this ability for a reason, that he was meant to do something with it, be a _hero_ \-- was it really all just because of the idle dreams of Nathan Young?

“Why?” he asked finally.

“I told you, I didn’t mean--”

“There has to be some reason,” Simon said desperately. “There was _something_ that made you dream that --”

Nathan sighed. “I guess,” he said, painting the counter with the condensation from his glass, “I guess part of me thought that -- well, if there were other people who were, you know, like me -- I would be less weird.”

Of all the possible reasons Simon could have imagined, this would not have been the one he’d have put money on. “You were lonely,” he said with sudden understanding.

Nathan blushed vividly. “Shut up,” he muttered.

“Nathan,” he said, it what he hoped was a tone that conveyed his abrupt surge of sympathy, “it’s all right.” He reached out and awkwardly put a hand on Nathan’s arm.

“It’s not really all right though, is it?” Nathan muttered. “Alisha can’t even touch people anymore, two people are dead, my mum’s -- the guy who lives with my mum is a dog, and I fucked a geriatric. I swear, Barry, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“I know,” he said.

Nathan glanced at him. “Really?”

He nodded.

“People tend to blame me for it,” he said, sighing and taking a sip of his drink. “Once they start to get suspicious, put two and two together. They avoid me.”

“Like Paul.”

“Yeah, like fucking Paul,” he muttered a little moodily. “Nobody gets it. It’s like --” he tilted his head, trying to think of a way to explain it, “I feel like it’s not even me doing it. It’s like somebody else takes over my brain while I sleep and ransacks all my thoughts, shit I didn’t really mean seriously, and then just shits it out into the real world. And I don’t know how to stop it!”

Simon thought of that night in the community center, hunting -- or being hunted -- by that quiet, shadowy version of Nathan. The one who could only survive at night, in the darkness. The ways its sludgy flesh had disappeared into Nathan’s body, as if it always had belonged there.

“Maybe you just have to accept it,” Simon said. “Maybe that’s the key to controlling it.”

Nathan cocked an eyebrow.

“I mean it, listen,” Simon insisted. “As long as you think of someone else being responsible for it, the harder it will be for you to take ownership of it. The good and the bad.”

“Maybe,” Nathan said, mulling it over. “Maybe you’re right, Barry. You are good at this stuff, after all.”

“Like solving mysteries, slaying monsters, that sort of thing?” Simon asked, smiling.

Nathan grinned. “Exactly.”

They were quiet for a moment, just watching each other, and then Simon became aware that his hand was still lightly resting on Nathan’s arm, and began to withdraw it. But Nathan caught his hand in his own and held it loosely, and then before Simon knew what was happening, he was leaning forward and pressing his mouth to Simon’s. Time seemed to stop. The din of the pub faded away. Simon was only aware of the sensation of Nathan’s smooth lips moving against his, his scent -- that mixture of smoke spiked with citrus, now soured a little by alcohol, but somehow still appealing -- overwhelming him, the warm pressure of his hand on his.

When Nathan pulled back, it all came flooding in again, and Simon found himself blushing, licking his lips self-consciously, desperately trying to figure out what to do by searching Nathan’s face for the answer. He was smiling, amused, but his expression was gentler than Simon had ever seen it.

“I guess it worked, because I’m not now, am I?” Nathan said. “Alone, I mean.”

Simon nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  


It wasn’t until later -- much later -- when Simon was lying in bed, mind still buzzing from revelations and lips still tingling from kisses -- that he realized that he’d never actually asked Nathan what his dream that had caused the storm actually been about. What the extent of it had been. How did his dreams really work? Had he simply dreamed about the storm? Or had he dreamed about a group of friends who weren’t quite normal, just like him, who could do strange and unusual things? When had he dreamed it, the night before community service began? Or had it been earlier, and the whole thing had set their arrests and sentencing into motion, simply  so that they could all be there that day on riverside, waiting for the lightning to strike them and change their lives?

That thought sent a shiver through him. The thought of Nathan’s loneliness-driven dreams manipulating his life, forcing him to make choices that would change the course of his life -- bone-chilling, really. It wasn’t that he blamed Nathan for it, he understood that he had little control over this strange power of his, and he also knew only too well what loneliness could do to a person. He’d never thought he’d have something like this in common with a person like Nathan, who seemed so confident, so unbothered by the position he occupied in the world, but he supposed people lied all the time about who they really were and how they felt and what they thought. Some were just better at it than others (he’d always been rubbish at it).

And this was all speculation, really. He didn’t know if Nathan’s dream had anything to do with him making the decision that night to light Matt’s house on fire, or with Kelly losing her temper and fighting that girl, or Curtis getting caught with that cocaine, or the complicated series of incidents that landed Alisha in that car when she shouldn’t have been driving at all. And did he really want to know, anyway? Because once he started down that road, it might be hard to stop. How much could Nathan’s dreams change? How far did their influence reach? How much of what Simon knew was real and how much of it was the product of dreamstuff? If you followed that road to its logical destination, he might find himself questioning everything. His entire existence, from birth to this very moment, _all of it_ , could be a dream. He could be as much an impossible miracle as his new phone.

And he couldn’t let himself ponder that. So he didn’t.

  


Not far away, in the dark of the community center, Nathan Young stirred in his sleep, and he dreamed.

  


**Author's Note:**

> The main inspiration for this story was me idly imagining if Nathan had this power which a character in Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Raven Boys” series has. I won’t say who, because it’s a spoiler, but they are making that series into a tv show and I thought if Robert Sheehan was the age he was in Misfits, he’d be an interesting choice to play that character. But it’s a great series which I highly recommend, and besides weird stuff with dreams it also includes: a house full of psychic women, a dead Welsh King, cool cars, ghosts, two dumb boys who take forever to kiss each other, and a raven named Chainsaw.


End file.
